Exercise equipment for the development of fitness, such as bicycles, treadmills, weight machines and free weights, has become widely used by the general public for fitness programs either at home or in fitness centers, such as health clubs and YMCAs. Such programs are utilized for purposes of stress testing, rehabilitation from heart attacks and strokes, and/or aerobic training. However, very little attention has been given to the use of such equipment for those who are disabled in any manner, such as being confined to a wheelchair, even though those persons whose primary mode of mobility is the manually operated wheelchair and have a need for exercise, fitness training, stress testing and the like. One would expect that wheelchair occupants will have more highly developed muscles of the arms, wrists and shoulders than the average person, however, such development is necessitated by the propelling of the wheelchair to move from place to place and may not be the most efficient and desirable exercise program for that person.
It has been demonstrated that a wheelchair ergometer can be used to effectively stress test the lower limb disabled population. Further, it has been recognized that the current testing modality, namely arm crank ergometers, have various shortcomings. Some of these shortcomings include that the ergometer does not allow the patient to utilize his/her normal mode of locomotion to assess the patient's physical fitness status; does not allow for the independent concurrent assessment of the right and left sides of the patient; and requires the patient to assume an awkward position during testing.
Of particular interest to this problem is the Kynast et al. U. S. Pat. No. 4,911,425 entitled "Wheelchair User Exercise Device", issued Mar. 27, 1990. This patent discloses a manually operated wheelchair user exercise device having a pair of laterally spaced, parallel ramps, each ramp including an open front end and a barriered rear end; wherein the ramps are jointly tiltable between a downwardly inclined forwardly facing position and a level position. Each ramp is provided at its rear end with a set of three rollers that are flywheel-effect equipped and are exposed in the base of the ramp. A manually operated mechanism simultaneously tilts the ramps between the tilted wheelchair receiving position and an operative level position once the wheelchair is backed onto the ramps and rests on the roller sets. At this point the front casters are braked and the user can manually actuate the rear wheels for exercise purposes.
This structure has several disadvantages for the user; namely, the manual operation of the tilting device for shifting the ramps between their tilted, wheelchair receiving position and the level testing position; the slope of the tilted position of the ramps resulting in a slippage problem as the wheelchair user attempts to back the chair onto the ramps; the pair of ramps receiving the wheelchair; the plurality of rollers supporting the wheelchair drive wheels at the rear end of each ramp; and the lack of adaptability of the assembly to wheelchairs of differing widths and differing cambers of the varying diameter large drive wheels of the wheelchair. Also, the caster capture system of this design lacks adequate lateral adjustability to accommodate the majority of wheelchairs, and the ramp widths limits the ability of the system to accommodate wheelchairs with larger dimensional differences between the drive wheel and caster track widths. The present invention, on the other hand, relates to an improved exercise arrangement for a wheelchair occupant which would allow that person to exercise and test the functional capacity of his cardiovascular system using his own wheelchair.